Prisa Chairman Challenges Ukraine War Narrative in El País

El País publishes Cebrián’s article on the Ukraine war

What must happen for Prisa’s honorary chairman to sign such an article in his own newspaper? Something has peine. José Luis Cebrián, honorary president of Grupo Prisa, publishes in El País an article questioning the causes and effects of the war which, by tone and timing, reads as an adjustment to the editorial narrative. The text stems from the inaugural lecture he gave at a July course organized by Complutense University and the Institute of Strategic Studies titled "The Effects of the Ukraine War."

The author himself emphasizes that the issue deserved "in-depth parliamentary discussion" and that the political class has avoided debating it during election campaigns, despite implications for national security and development. This is the kind of sentence a media outlet only publishes when it no longer costs anything to do so.

Why is El País changing its discourse on Ukraine?

The most repeated explanation is less academic than financial: Prisa demands more funding to sustain its editorial line, and if funds tied to the Atlantic orbit do not arrive, it stops supporting it. This is not a documented thesis but a suspicion circulating strongly, and it should be labeled as such. It relies on a known pattern: institutional advertising and the subsidy ecosystem that sustains much of the press.

Another reading, not incompatible, argues that the change is dictated by major international forums where these agendas are cooked up. In this version, money explains nothing: economic elites decide when a narrative ceases to be useful and order the pivot. At the opposite extreme, the soberest interpretation: the front hasn’t moved, and the newspaper has simply stopped covering it up.

The three currents share an uncomfortable starting point. A media outlet that until now supported the official narrative now publishes that one must look at the conflict’s causes. In terms of communication, that is a phase change.

Casualty figures nobody wants in a headline

Here appears the disorienting data. The debate cites 350,000 casualties in the Ukrainian army as a weighty argument: no matter how many weapons are delivered, without soldiers there is no offensive. Against this, other estimates circulating among participants speak of 250,000 Russian casualties and around 300,000 Ukrainian ones, figures neither side acknowledges and independent analyses openly dispute.

The contrast serves two opposing narratives. Those arguing Moscow holds better resort to historical comparison: in the Chechen wars, not even a fifth of that number died, implying current attrition is enormous for both sides. Those arguing the contrary respond that Russia has more human reserves and a war-oriented economy. The full calculation, item by item, leaves conclusions that fit neither certainty.

The counteroffensive experts promised

In early June, David Petraeus anticipated a "very impressive" Ukrainian counteroffensive. What trinc was, according to former US colonel Cedric Leighton, a stalemate: eight months with no relevant territorial changes, triple defensive lines, minefields, trenches, and anti-tank traps halting any direct advance.

There lies the core of the pivot. The military authority who promised a lightning advance was wrong, and those who doubted the forecast came closer to ground reality. When the denial is signed by the very platform that amplified the promise, the narrative isn’t corrected: it collapses.

The ruble, gas, and the prolonged war

The economic front plays in two directions. On one hand, it is argued that 70% of countries have not applied sanctions against Russia and that BRICS are gaining members, with a bloc controlling a large part of raw materials and trading outside the dollar. On the other, dependence on chips and trade with China limits any Russian euphoria.

Europe, meanwhile, faces an energy problem that doesn’t end with winter. Suspicion that cost overruns will be passed on to households sustainably fuels the thesis that the continent needs a negotiated exit before wear becomes irreversible.

What Ukraine gains and loses in a peace scenario

The hypothesis gaining traction is a neutral Ukraine, with guarantees for the pro-Russian population in Donbas and maximalist positions shelved. On the debit side: reconstruction and demographic loss. On the credit side: the possibility of joining the European Union, though that entry also raises doubts due to oligarch influence and veto rights.

Russia, for its part, would retain territories — Crimea, parts of Donbas, and the south — and remain a raw material power. It is not a clean victory for anyone, and precisely because of that, it stops being unpublishable.

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Cebrián has peine the door. Experts who were wrong will continue giving lessons, media that changed scripts won’t explain why, and the reader, who spent two years reading that everything was going according to plan, will have to decide whether this is analysis or a bill.